Fourteenth Century England X

Overview

Overview

The fruits of new research on the politics, society and culture of England in the fourteenth century.

Drawing on a diverse range of documentary, literary and material evidence, the essays collected here consider a wide range of important issues for the period. Political and institutional history is addressed in essays on Edward II's personal expenditure and the development and workings of parliament, including an analysis of those neglected "parliamentarians" of the period, the parliamentary proctors. Important new insights into the social history of the fourteenth century are provided by chapters on marriage and the accumulation of lay estates, the brokerage of royal wardship and the important and difficult subject of sexual violence towards under-age girls. Another chapter considers the enormously costly and complex task of feeding and supplying medieval armies across the "long" fourteenth century, while two final pieces offer important new insights into the material culture of the age, focusing in turn on St Stephen's Chapel, Westminster, and the phenomenon of royal reburial. Richly textured with personal and local detail, these new studies provide numerous insights into the lives of great and small in this fascinating period of medieval history.

Gwilym Dodd is Associate Professor of Medieval History at the University of Nottingham.

Table of Contents

'Bought by the King Himself': Edward II, his Chamber, his Family and his Interests in 1325-26 - Kathryn WarnerParliament in the Reign of Edward II, with Some After-Thoughts on the Modus Tenendi Parliamentum - Seymour PhillipsThe Representation of the Clergy in Parliament - Alison K. McHardyFeeding Mars: Military Purveyance in the Long Fourteenth Century - Ilana Krug'Unnatural in Body and a Villain in Soul': Rape and Sexual Violence Towards Girls Under the Age of Canonical Consent in Late Medieval England - Alan KissaneMarriage and Inheritance: the Element of Chance in the Development of Lay Estates in the Fourteenth Century - Bridget Wells-FurbyMary Percy and John de Southeray: Wardship, Marriage and Divorce in Fourteenth-Century England - Laura TompkinsRichard II's Kingship at St Stephen's Chapel, Westminster, 1377-1399 - Elizabeth BiggsBodies in Constant Motion: the Burials and Reburials of the Plantagenet Dynasty, c. 1272-1399 - Anna M. Duch